Except for my making more noise than is usual for me on the Stuart piano.
Overall my eye is much better and I’m now pretty confident that when the bubble finally goes my vision will be very close to what it was, which I must say is rather a relief. It still amazes me that such a complex and delicate operation can be performed so successfully. Apart from my enforced time at home, there have really been no side effects or post-operative issues whatsoever.
I’ve been playing all sorts of music, including Gottschalk, Tan Dun, Granados, Chopin etc plus a whole swag of composers that I haven’t really had time in the past to investigate in any detail, for example the Mexican composer Manuel Ponce, whose 1st Intermezzo is a really gorgeous piece of music, and the Irish composer and scholar Howard Ferguson.
What I’ve found is that my use of the piano’s sonority characteristics is getting better all of the time. As I’ve mentioned in previous postings, you can’t really play any kind of music on this piano in the same way as you would on a ‘traditional’ piano. I’m using less damper pedal (although I’m still using the two soft pedals quite extensively) and in many cases (although not all) I’m not playing these pieces as fast as perhaps I would have done in the past or else as I can remember from my student days. Some pieces I’m actually playing faster – the Granados Spanish Dance no 2 and the Ravel Pavane pour une Infante Defunte are two such pieces.
Whilst obviously my technique (or, rather, lack of it) is a contributing factor here, nonetheless the amazing clarity of this piano allows for much more flexibility in the way these pieces come out – and this suits me down to the ground since by nature I am something of an ‘impulsive’ interpreter and will very rarely play a piece twice in the same way and almost invariably not according to the edition’s editorial idiosyncracies.
I’m reinventing all the time and so far the results are pretty good. The journey continues.